Sierra Delta

And so it was that a great time to write a post was on a snow day. It was also evidently a good idea to begin the post as though it were a book of the Bible. Today was a snow day of sorts; not for me, because in radio, it could be snowing fireballs and the show must go on. But my roommates took the day off rather than brave the elements, and Ned is on Christmas break anyway. Unable to resist the call of AM EDH, I was roused from my slumber at 9:30. Following three games, we set out, a ragtag band of four young lads, and emerged from the fray as FIRE TEAM SIERRA DELTA: The Power Rangers of Snow Removal.

It was reminiscent of Fire Team Alpha and Fire Team Bravo, two similarly elite strike forces set out to retrieve items on a post-Hobbit excursion to Walmart on Christmas Eve. Fire Team Alpha's mission was to escort a few boxes of dishes, purchased by my dad as a Christmas gift for my mom, out to the van (Alpha for "automobile"), and I was proud to be a member alongside my dad and my brother Michael. Chris, Ned, and Mark comprised Fire Team Bravo, combing the bowels of Walmart's grocery underbelly in search of a loaf of bread (Bravo for "bread"). Both missions were successful.

As the storm beset the Capital Region in the twilight hours of 2012, we were dispatched to help shovel out our respective parents' driveways, stopping first at the abode of my progenitors, where our training was held and we acquired our weapons: snow shovels, each of a different color, to match our... well I don't know what they matched, but they were all different, like Power Rangers. Mine was black, Chris's was blue, Ned's was red, and Anthony's was green. I'm not making this up.

Following swift completion of our task, we then made the trek to Anthony's parents' residence, whereupon we, combined with his brother's silver shovel, cleared out the entire driveway in less than 15 minutes. At that point, we realized our true potential and began naming our trusty shovels. My first inspiration was Mjolnir, in honor of the mighty Thor's hammer. But I realized a more appropriate term was be Elbrus, the Binding Shovel, a homage to a legendary equipment from Magic. And then, the conversation devolved into the dorkiest exchange I've had in a long time, and we just went back and forth substituting the word "shovel" in the names of different Magic cards. For instance: Shovel, the Risen Deep. One of my personal favorites was It that Shovels, but seriously, it was nerdy to the max.

Anyway, the moral of the story is we shoveled really fast.

They Don't Know What Dope Is

In Bioshock 2 (which I recently finished), there's an audio diary recorded by a little boy named Billy Parson in Dionysus Park:



In case you've never played a Bioshock game, Little Sisters are genetically modified little girls who collect Adam (itself a substance that can modify DNA) from corpses in the undersea city of Rapture, and they have glowing yellow eyes. Most of the population of Rapture regarded the Little Sisters as monsters, deplorable abominations to be feared and avoided. But to Billy, this one particular Little Sister was no monster, she was beautiful. And in reality, she was in fact just a poor, impressionable little girl, conditioned, manipulated, and subverted by someone willing to take advantage of her. Altered, but not irredeemable.

There's indication in the game that the Little Sister Billy was in love with was Cindy, Mark Meltzer's daughter. I rescued her. Ultimately, that's the whole point of both Bioshock games: to save the Little Sisters. Unless you want the bad ending, but nobody wants the bad ending.

Billy loved this Little Sister even though he didn't know any more about her than anyone else in Rapture did. He just had a feeling, a feeling that didn't remotely touch on the possibility of her being evil or a lost cause. And she was neither of those things.

I Could Make A Demi Lovato Song Title Joke Too, Among Other Things

I've never posted a blog in December before, so here we go, forging ahead into uncharted territory. Just a heads up, this blog isn't going to be about anything in particular.

Last December, my video game of choice was Saints Row: The Third, which had, in my opinion, two of the greatest set pieces in video game history. One of those scenes featured "Holding Out For a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler, so naturally, having been reminded of that, I have to play the song now. Currently, I'm working my way through Bioshock 2, an event nearly three years in the making (since it came out in early 2010, just after I finished the first Bioshock), and the game does not disappoint. It's good to have a game in which to lose myself again; sleepless nights are much better spent with engaging activity than in the sole company of a wandering mind.

Of course, the reason I'm able to play Bioshock 2 in the first place is because Missy got it for me as a birthday present. Two years ago in December, Missy was Lauren's friend from Greene who came up to visit every so often and who then helped inspire one of the most oft-repeated lines in Highland Ave Era history: "I'M NOT DRUUUUUUNK!" At that point, I never would have imagined that someday she'd be bugging me to do the dishes all the time. I did always think you were cool though Missy, in case you're reading this. But I'm pretty sure you know that already.

And then if you go back to December three years ago, Taylor Swift was just dumping Taylor Lautner, and then she wrote a song about it, called "Back To December."  That was when I had my first designs on Bioshock, which has absolutely nothing to do with Taylor Swift (I just wanted to do the "back to December" thing). I didn't pick it up until after Christmas though, when I bought it in a two pack with Oblivion for 20 bucks. I still haven't tried Oblivion because it just doesn't interest me at all. The same goes for Skyrim.

Maybe looking back like this is my brain's way of setting itself up to finally write the all-encompassing recap of 2011. A few months ago I said I was gonna do it, and I started it, but never finished. And of course of all of these past Decembers, the one that sticks in my mind the most is 2010, probably because I was on the precipice of that life-changing perfect storm of events. Or maybe that was just a particularly awesome December. Maybe I'm wrong about everything, and we're all just bumbling through life without any particular trajectory. I can't bring myself to believe that, though.

I apologize if you read this far looking for a nugget of wisdom. Then again, I did warn you in the second sentence of the post that this wouldn't be about anything. Sometimes, I just like to write. And I'm not really the wisdom nugget authority anyway.

$1.05 Surcharge

Earlier today, I made some tentative plans to get together with some guys and play EDH this Sunday. It's funny the things you take for granted. Or maybe it's just me. Something simple like having free time and using it to do something I'm interested in, and being able to make uncontested plans without consequence... when I was in a relationship, that's all I wanted to be able to do; my own thing, without having to report to anyone or make sure there weren't any other plans I was violating before I went ahead and said "yeah, let's play Magic on this day at this time, that'd be fun." That was the thing that was missing from my life, and now I've got it back.

So there's that.

Like I said, funny the things you take for granted. I think sometimes life gives you what you want because you're supposed to have it. Other times, it gives you what you want because... well, it'll take any sucker's money.

YATTA!

One of the best ways to ruin a movie (or a book, or any kind of story) is to have the ending spoiled. It's almost like there's no point wasting time with the details when you already know what's going to happen at the conclusion. The reason I say this is because, like any person on the planet, I have a reasonable degree of uncertainty in my life, and just like anyone else, I try as much as possible to reduce that uncertainty at every turn. I often find myself thinking "if I just knew how ____ was going to turn out, everything would be okay."

No. No, it wouldn't. That would absolutely suck. The ending would be ruined, and there'd be no point in even trying to get from point A to point B, especially if the ending is (or seems from the current perspective) unfavorable.

Which brings me to my next point: I do believe that the story is written and has an ending. Why? Because I believe in Destiny. I'm talking Hiro Nakamura style Destiny. Why a capital D? Because it's something awesome that you should strive to achieve, and in fact have to strive to achieve, because the concept of Destiny doesn't preclude free will. You've got choices to make, and you have to make them, but they're all leading up to something. "Save the cheerleader, save the world." The world isn't going to save itself, you still have to make decisions and take action, but when you do, things will happen. You're working towards an end, even if you don't know what the end really is. 

Man, if you haven't seen Heroes (or at least the first season), you're really missing out. One of the things I loved most about that show was that they devoted an entire episode in the first season to what was coming five years down the road, and as a result, the characters who've seen it set off to try and stop that apocalyptic future from happening. In so doing, they change a few small details along the way, but over the course of the seasons, you can see the characters slowly start to become the people they had seen in the future regardless of their intentions. In essence, they could alter the path, but couldn't change the ending. 

If you're wondering how destiny and free will can coexist, I don't blame you. I could probably spend another entire post on that subject (and perhaps I will someday soon), but I can sum it up for you like this: it's the same way Jesus could be fully God and fully man. Yeah, try and wrap your brain around that. Doesn't really make sense, does it? No. You either buy it or you don't. Yeah yeah, I'm a Grade A apologist for sure. But hand in hand with the concept of destiny is the notion of purpose. Some people are soldiers, some are medics; some are meant to fight the battles, some are meant to tend to the wounds of those who fight. Me? I'm just here to entertain the troops. But again, I don't think the importance of entertainment should be downplayed. To quote the wise teacher Roger Rabbit, "A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have!" We're not always facing down physical enemies. But I digress.

My point is, life is a journey. Part of what makes it interesting is not knowing what comes next. So if you find yourself wishing you had all the answers and the rest of your life was mapped out, just think of the last time a movie was ruined for you. You don't want to know the end. Half the fun is in the process of getting there. Take each step one at a time, and you'll get where you're going, whether you know where that is or not.

Honey I'm Gonna Make It Out Alive

The following is an account of my thoughts prior to boarding my flight to Lynchburg this past Saturday. Just so you know.

It is 4:21 AM, on November 10th. I'm sitting at gate B1, a little more than half hour before my scheduled boarding time. This is usually about the time when I start to consider going to bed for the night, so I shouldn't be tired, but I think the fact that my brain knows I won't be getting a substantial amount of sleep any time soon is making me more fatigued than usual.

Sitting in an airport terminal is an odd experience; not unpleasant, necessarily, just odd. For one thing, I've only flown... let's see... five times before this one (twice to Disney World in high school, once home for Thanksgiving break freshman year of college, once to Jamie's wedding in the Dominican Republic after my senior year of college, and once to DC for Dave and Olga's wedding just this past June). I'm far more experienced taking the train than I am flying, and I will admit that I do feel more comfortable knowing the train has a pretty slim chance of plummeting from the sky at any given point in time. In addition, railway security is far less invasive than airport security, due in large part to the fact that there is none. You just grab your bags and hop on the train, and you don't have to worry about them confiscating your pocketknife.

For another thing, I get a strange feeling as I sit here, a feeling of... not sadness, exactly, but loneliness I guess. I mean, I am here alone, so I'm sure that contributes, and I'm headed to a land far away from home. But that land is Lynchburg, which was my home for a good five years (nine months out of each of those years, anyway) and I'm going to visit some of my best friends in the world. I feel like I should be out of my skull with enthusiasm. Then again, it is 4:30 in the morning, the sun isn't up, and I'm all alone. Once I get down there, I'm sure I'll feel a little more comfortable. The air in here is a bit stuffy anyway.

There are maybe a dozen people in the whole terminal spread out across the different gates, and a lady just came over and sat down in my row. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, and she's a good six or seven seats down, but with so many empty rows, it makes you wonder why she would sit in this one. Probably because it's prime real estate, as close as you can get to the gate while still facing it. Or it could just be the pheromones I'm exuding. I am quite irresistible. I dunno, I just generally prefer to be as far as possible from strangers.

A girl just walked up to the little desk in front of the gate. There's still about 20 minutes until the scheduled boarding time (4:55), and in my experience they almost never board on time, but this does provide a ray of hope. I'm questioning now, though, whether I'm just writing for the sake of writing, or whether I'm actually providing any valuable insight. Frick, I guess if I was concerned about that, I wouldn't have this blog in the first place.

My Sherriff badge made it through security. I was a little concerned about that, but not concerned enough not to risk it.

People are starting to gather at the gate, and now there are people behind me. I know they probably aren't looking at my screen, but the notion that someone could possibly be reading what I'm typing as I type it freaks me out, so I'm gonna shut this down for the time being. Catch you on the flip side.

It's Not Over Until The Last Creature's Turned Sideways

"You must have a lot on your mind."

The words of Anthony tonight when I got home as we discussed my increased blog output in recent days. That wasn't a complete sentence. Sue me.

One of my favorite things about Magic is how many comparisons you can draw between the game and real life. "Well yeah, you can draw comparisons between any game and real life." Sure. But Magic, like real life, involves equal elements of skill AND luck. Most sports, for instance, revolve mostly around skills and techniques that have been honed and perfected over a long period of time, but don't require tremendous degrees of luck. It usually comes down to purely how good you are at the sport or how well your team functions as a whole. A game like Monopoly, on the other hand, which certainly contains an element of skill, is mostly determined by the luck of the dice rolls. With Magic, not only do you have to be a skilled player, know the game, the techniques, the strategies, the tactics, be able to weigh the possibilities and the outcomes, but you also have to rely on the luck of the draw. Sure, you can increase your chances at having a good draw by building a good deck, but again, just another parallel to real life, where you can increase your chances of success in a given scenario by preparing yourself for it. Even then, no matter how prepared you are, you still have to play with the hand you draw. Plus, unlike sports (and like most aspects of life), there isn't a key physical aspect that needs to be mastered. The closest game I can think of to being as much like real life as Magic would be poker (another card game, incidentally), and even then, you don't build your own deck, so it's not quite as tight of a comparison. Plus, Magic is cooler.

The remainder of this post may not make much sense to you depending on your level of understanding of Magic, but then again, this particular post is probably more for my own benefit. If you do know Magic, and I know at least a few of you do, then maybe it'll mean something. I just know that even if I could spend a lot of time trying to explain it I still wouldn't do a very good job, so I'll just throw this disclaimer out there now.

My main point here is this: if you scoop, you have no chance of winning. "Scooping" is conceding because you know you've already lost. The problem with doing so is that even if you're dead on board, your opponent might not see it, and you could be one turn away from victory. If he misses something and gives you one more shot, you've got it. But if you scoop, then you've got nothing. You can't make it easy for him. This is why I wait until the last, lethal points of damage are coming at me before I say "yeah, you've got it."

Like I said, there's an element of luck to Magic. Topdecking, or drawing exactly the card you need exactly when you need it, is not by any means a skillful maneuver, but it's often necessary, and it happens frequently. If you give up, you lose your chance to topdeck. If you rage quit because your strategy keeps getting disrupted, you won't live long enough to topdeck that Boundless Realms and landfall for 12 bird tokens to keep you alive for a few turns. If you say "well, this game is locked up, I just lost" when your opponent miracles Entreat the Angels for 9 tokens, you won't have a chance to put Verdant Embrace on your Emeria Angel and start popping saprolings into play to gain enough life off of Leyline of Vitality to stabilize. Don't quit the game until the game is over. Dig for an answer. Put all your resources and all your focus into finding a way to get back in the game. Lock the board down so you can survive long enough to draw Vigor and go on the offensive. Because no one blocks your creatures when Vigor's out unless they have to to survive.

I understand most of that last paragraph was likely indecipherable to at least a few people, so I'll distill it down to this: do not quit. If you've got something you're after, keep at it. Persist. You may not have a chance, but if you quit, you certainly have no chance. Sure, it may come down to luck... but who knows, maybe luck will be on your side. And yes, that exact scenario did happen the other night during a game. I almost quit in the face of overwhelming odds, but I played it out, and I won.

Yeah, Magic is a game. It's designed to be fun for the players and profitable for the designers, and it is both of those things. But I think anything that can help sharpen my perspective and outlook on life is more than JUST a game. There are other aspects of Magic I might touch on in the future, like knowing your opponents' play styles, playing around counterspells, head games, slow rolling, etc., but one of the most basic and universally applicable principles is that of never giving up until you're absolutely certain it's over. If you wanna win, you gotta keep playing, and that's all there is to it.

Staying Pleasantly Warm

A few posts ago, I mentioned detailing my adventures in 2011, and I'm not sure if I ever called it by name, but I was gonna title it the Tale of 2011 Trilogy and tell it in three parts, because that's what a trilogy is and every story with a heightened sense of self-importance is told as a trilogy, whether it needs to be or not.

Well, I began writing part one, and kept writing.... and kept writing, and kept writing, and kept writing. Boy, was that sucker long, and I didn't even finish it. And that was only the first installment. And then I realized that, as dynamic and life-changing as 2011 was for me, it wouldn't really be that interesting for someone who didn't live it unless I could apply some kind of relevant insight. And then I happened upon the inspiration for my previous post, which allowed me to distill 2011 into a few paragraphs and avoid getting bogged down in details that no one really cared about, like the time we went to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que and I used my time-tested seating arrangement technique to get the girl I liked to sit next to me. Actually, that's probably a bad example because that technique, which I developed and perfected in college, never fails and therefore could probably be useful to someone somewhere, but you get what I'm saying.

Inspiration comes from the strangest of places though. Today's comes from my trench coat. It's missing, and it's very distressing. I loved that coat. But if we rewind the clock once again to 2011, we'll see that I was so busy having my world turned upside down and then right side up again that I only had time to write one blog, for which the inspiration was my flannel shirt. Interestingly enough, that shirt had been missing for some time up until a few days before I wrote that post, the loose theme of which was the sense of relief and contentment I felt at having found my shirt after giving up on the search a long while before. And the funny part about it was that the shirt had been literally (and I mean that in the literal sense of the word "literally," not the figurative sense that's been spreading like a plague throughout our culture) underneath me the entire time, stuffed in the couch cushions.

So here I am, missing my trench coat. I was a bit concerned about it before, but upon remembering that I eventually found my flannel shirt, I relaxed a little bit. My coat will probably turn up. I'm confident that it will; not 1000% positive, mind you, but confident. And if it doesn't... well, life goes on. For as much as I want my trench coat, I don't need it. Yes, I loved that coat and it will always have a special place in my heart even if I don't find it, but I have other jackets and other frankly warmer coats.

Don't get me wrong. I really hope I find it. But if not, at the end of the day, I'll find something to keep me warm. This one's for you, trench coat.

I Believe In Harvey Dent

The year was 2009, and the season was fall, as it is now. I was not back at school like I had planned to be. I was, every night, going to my job as a janitor for a few hours, then coming home to sit on my bed with my computer for a few more hours, going to sleep, and then doing it all again. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, but it seemed like there weren't many options. I had no friends in the area, and Chris was out virtually every night with some friends from middle school he had just reconnected with, and though he invited me to come do stuff with them a few times, it just wasn't really clicking; they weren't my type of people. So there I was, a janitor, confused as to where my life was going (seemingly nowhere), and with no social life at all. My favorite thing to do at the time was play Magic, which Chris and I spent most of the nights that summer doing, but with him gone every night, I had no one to play with. Combine all these factors, and I wouldn't say I was depressed, exactly, just... going through the motions with no sense of purpose, and with no end in sight.

And then, one day in February of 2010, Chris said to me "so I'm getting Nick and Anthony into Magic." And just like that, there was a ray of hope.

If you think it's stupid that my ray of hope came from the notion that I would once again have someone to play a nerdy card game with, then let me stop you right there, because you obviously don't understand the importance of entertainment and escapism. You can open your mind and keep reading, or go back to working yourself to the bone to get that bonus that's FIFTY TIMES your annual salary so you can retire when you're 40 and then die of a stress induced heart attack shortly thereafter.

Anyway, Chris managed to interest Nick and Anthony enough in Magic to keep them playing, and we found out that one of Chris's co-workers at K-Mart also played. Like I said, I had never really had much interest in hanging out with these people, but I was so starved for some Magic action I didn't care who was playing. Which was good, because, long story short, I discovered they were actually pretty cool and we became friends. So by spring of 2010, I had a social life again (and yes, while we spent a lot of time playing Magic, we also did other things) and wasn't just stuck in the endless rut of janiting and sleeping.

We move next, then, to January of 2011. A few days after the most fantastic New Years Eve party I've ever attended, I was displaced from my house. I moved in with Chris, who was living in Troy at the time, and... to be honest, I don't think I've ever felt more hopeless in my life. Without a real home, I felt like there was no way I could ever make anything of myself. I still had my job as a janitor to sustain a meager income, but it was now much farther away, and I had no reliable way to get there. Plus, Chris's house was freezing cold, especially at night in the living room, where I slept on the couch.

Then, some friends of Chris's from college hosted a party at their house. I spent the night there, since it was warmer than Chris's place. One of the occupants of the house offered to give me (and Chris, who at the time was my janitorial cohort) a ride to work. I came back that night, and asked if the residents wouldn't mind me spending another night there. They said they didn't care, I could stay as long as I wanted. So I stayed another night. And another. And another. Ultimately, I made arrangements to just live there for the foreseeable future (until the end of the school year, when they would all be graduating and moving out). I slept on their couch every night, and even had a space where I kept my clothes and few personal belongings. And the aforementioned friend continued to give me and Chris a ride to work virtually every day (and when he couldn't, Missy stepped up).

And so began the best post-college time of my life. It was like an extension of dorm life, except without the stress of class projects to weigh me down, and at that point, I felt more free than I ever have. Sure, there was the looming problem of what I was going to do with my life once everyone graduated and I had to move out of that house, but I figured I'd let Future Bill worry about that and just enjoy the ride. And, for the record, I enjoyed it very much. Oh, the tales I could tell of life at the Orphanage (as it came to be known)... perhaps another day. But those days were truly glorious.

Our next stop is only a few months advanced, late April/early May 2011. By that time I had made the decision to move in permanently with Chris, so while I had a place to live, the impending end of the carefree Orphanage days was on my mind as well as another goal that seemed simultaneously impossible and inevitable (a mental state with which I'm oddly familiar). I sat on the front porch of the Orphanage in the rain one night, alone, listening to my little red MP3 player, pondering my predicament. I suppose there's no real way to dance around the details here... you see, two days prior, I had just spilled my guts to the girl I liked, and she had shot me down. She told me she liked someone else. She was out with him that night as I sat on the porch, trying to wrap my brain around the fact that the thing I wanted most in the world at the time was likely going to be completely out of reach. She too was living at the Orphanage in those days, and I expected her to be gone the entire night, but thought I might get to hear the story of her escapades the next day.

She came back that night, and three nights later, we were dating.

I still had to deal with paying rent and affording the necessary commodities on the hourly wages of a janitor working not much more than 15 hours a week. But then, a few days after moving into the house, I got a call from a radio station I had sent my resume to almost a year and a half prior. They needed a new part time employee, and I wanted to work in radio. I took the job, and three months later, through a series of events that I would have sworn only happen in the movies, I had my dream job. But you probably know that story.

"Is he gonna make a point someday soon?" Yes, and it was best said by Harvey Dent: "the night is darkest just before the dawn" (of course, I know he wasn't the first person to say it, but he's the most culturally relevant right now). If the structure of the blog fulfilled its intended purpose, then you may have noticed that I've been operating within the bounds of a pattern here, with a hopeless scenario followed up by deliverance, sometimes out of nowhere.

I know I'm not exactly a wise old man, but the last few years have taught me enough to know that you're gonna have some bad times in your life. But when you do, remember it's the little things that will keep you sane, things like a card game, or a ride to work when you need it, or a phone call when you least expect it. And most importantly, keep in mind that those bad times aren't the end of the line. As simplistic as it sounds, you never know what's gonna happen next. I guess that's the real point. Sometimes bad things happen for a reason, and you could be just moments away from the greatest occurrence of your life. So no matter how hopeless it may seem, just keep plugging away. It's going to get brighter.

Thank Goodness For Mostly Finished Bottles Of Ginger Ale At 5:40 AM

I went to bed early last night because A) I had been tired all weekend and wasn't able to break out of my funk and B) there wasn't really anything left to do. As I mentioned in my last post, I've been having really weird dreams lately, and I just woke up from one in a bit of a shock, the kind of shock that makes you say "Hmm, I should sit down and write about this." So here I am.

I dreamed I was given the opportunity to go back in time and observe myself at the start of my college days. At first, I was in sort of a spectator mode, just walking around and looking at things and saying "wooooow" to myself at the subtle differences between my memory of things and how they actually appeared to me (which, since this was a dream, was probably less accurate than my actual memory of things, incidentally). I think I was even able to float to some extent, but that's more or less irrelevant. At some point, I was just wandering by the Rot and saw myself and my group of friends waiting to get in, which caused me to get rather depressed for some reason, possibly because I missed both hanging out with my friends and the option of just getting free meals from the dining hall all the time. I also noted to myself how much more attractive but also socially awkward I was back then (again, this being a dream, I'm not sure how accurate my assessment of my former self was).

I then realized that I was outside, it was very early in the morning, it was cold and drizzly, and I was in my pjs, so I went to try to get into my old dorm, 22-3. At first I was frustrated when it occurred to me that I couldn't get in without a key, but then I remembered a series of connecting hallways that led from the main lobby of Demoss into the dorm hall (once again, this is not a real thing, so my dream memory is a bit shoddy). After making my way through Demoss and once I was just outside the hall itself, I ran into Andrew Clark. I got the strange feeling that he didn't quite belong there either, since he seemed to be headed to work, not to class, but he didn't notice me at first, and I figured it was because I was a sort of time travelling apparition anyway, so I smacked him on the back to get his attention. He looked at me very matter of factly and said "Bill. How are you feeling?" I replied "I feel..." and then sighed, and he said "Weary. I know." And that was exactly the word I had been unable to find. Nothing more was said, but we exchanged manly hugs and went on our respective ways.

Well THAT made me somewhat depressed, as the way he had spoken those last words seemed to say "yeah, me too, but you have to just keep plugging away." So I kept walking toward the interior of the hall, where, amusing anecdote, I saw Brian Demaso, told him that I just talked to Andrew Clark, and he said "Oh yeah? What sweeper did you use?" and I replied with "the 'I'm going to work' sweeper," and then made a sound effect. For the record, this is some radio nonsense (a sweeper is a little sound bit put in between songs that identifies the station, for instance) that means nothing, and it was one of those things that felt totally natural to talk about within the context of the dream, but when I woke up it sounded ridiculous. I'm only mentioning this now because when I go back and read this a little ways down the road, I'll chuckle at the absurdity of what I would have otherwise forgotten. Anyway, once inside the hall, there was something of human traffic jam, and I discovered that the cause of it was three or four girls standing in the middle jabbering away, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. A few guys were kind of sheepishly trying to get their attention to make them stop talking and move, but they were all pretty attractive girls and the guys seemed nervous about the prospect of talking to them. Realizing how silly this was, I, in my infinite wisdom since being removed from the mindset of a college freshman, walked up and bellowed "Ex-CUSE ME PLEASE, LADIES!" at the top of my lungs in a deep, Morpheus-addressing-Zion voice.

That got their attention, and they started to move, and I was a hero. A few of the girls were talking disgustedly among themselves about how incredibly rude I was, and I was offended, noting to myself that all I had done was ask them politely to move when they were keeping everyone from going anywhere. One girl, however, expressed that same sentiment to the others and defended my actions, and kept glancing back at me. I started following her down the hill toward whatever massive game of capture the flag (or whatever) it was we were all going to play, and I introduced myself. After a few brief exchanges, I thought "I've found her! My soul mate! Now... do I spend the 3 mana to give my crocodile lifelink?" (Again, another thing that makes no sense that I'll find funny later on) 

At that point, I experienced a dramatic epiphany: I realized that I was not simply in spectator mode, but that I could take actions and make decisions that could alter the course of history, or at least my own personal history, and I realized that I had an opportunity to give myself one of the things I had always wanted throughout my college career, and that was a girlfriend. And then, horrified, I caught myself. All at once, it dawned on me that something as seemingly simple and harmless getting a girlfriend for my past self could in fact very radically alter the course of history, specifically dictating how often I hung out with my guy friends and even possibly affecting who I chose to hang out with in the first place. I woke up in a shock.

And that's where we are right now. It was quite a startling realization. See, I'm a big believer that things happen for a reason, and I didn't want to mess any of that up, especially if it would influence the relationships that developed with my friends in college. Granted, we've all gone our separate ways since then, but I believe, and I don't think I'm alone on this one, that if we all got together again, we'd be able to sit down in 305, for instance, and just carry on as normal, just like we always did back then (I actually have a draft I wrote about a similar concept after Dave's wedding... I'll have to get around to finishing and posting that sometime). My point is, I wouldn't trade my experiences with my friends back then for anything. Some people would respond with something along the lines of "well if you had never met those people, you would have made other friends, so it doesn't really make any difference." No, screw you, you only say that because you don't have very good friends.

Anyway, after thinking about it for a brief moment, that dream helped me realize that some of the "what if" issues are essentially irrelevant, whatever they were. It doesn't matter because it didn't happen that way. The only thing that matters now is what happens now and how you deal with it moving forward. I never had a girlfriend in college, and considering how appalled my dream self was at the notion of that prospect messing up history, I'd say that's not only okay, it's delightful. I suppose, to sum this up briefly, there's a time and a place for everything, whether things happen exactly the way you want them to or not.

Well would you look at that, there WAS a nugget of wisdom to be offered at the end of this post. Also, if nothing else, I find dreams to be fascinating windows into our subconsciousness, so I always like talking about them. Plus, after checking the clock upon waking up, I discovered that what felt like a full night's sleep was only about 3 hours. I was also really thirsty, hence the title. Also, forgive me if my writing was sub-par; I've been in sort of a daze the whole time trying to recall all this, and it's friggin early in the morning. I guess all that's left to do now is go eat a donut hole.

Sitting On My Bed Doing Homework For News Writing

First things first: this new blogger interface sucks. Because it's new. I don't like getting used to new things. It was perfectly fine the way it used to be. I hate change. But you know that already.

The reason I'm here now is because it's one of those nights where I can't sleep because I feel like I'm drowning in a veritable sea of nostalgia.  I know this sounds silly, but I'm an incredibly sentimental person. That's why I save everything. I like to have a tangible link to the past, something I can pick up and say "oh yeah, I remember where I was and what I was doing and how I felt when I got this." That's why I video tape so many things (or why I used to, there hasn't been much to tape lately); having them on record and being able to look back at them is important to me.

I was gonna post this. I swear I was. But these things never come out the way I intend. It's like I can monologue to myself in my head in the most flowery prose conceivable, and have a nice, cohesive, linear train of thought, but as soon as it comes time to translate that pattern into actual writing, it turns to mush and melts away.

I guess my point is I miss things. Lots of things. From every point in my life. I get super nostalgic and I wish things could be the way they used to be. But I like my life the way it is now too. I guess what I really want is just to be able to go back and experience some of the good parts of my past again. So... I guess what I'm saying is I want a time machine, or maybe a consciousness-influenced experiential history simulator, so I can go back to particularly desirable moments and see if they really were as good as I remember them being.

I suppose all this has been brought about by the weird dreams I've been having lately, dreams from all over the place, historically speaking, and each one of them has been sort of a downer. Couple that with the fact that today was one of those crappy rainy fall days and then add in my odd work hours that restrict me from seeing most people outside of the weekend, and you've got a nice recipe for some melancholic introspection. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. This isn't a "woe is me, my life is so miserable, feel sorry for me" rant, not in the slightest. I just feel weird, can't sleep, and need to get it out somehow. I also love the way typing on a laptop keyboard feels, so this sort of comes as the natural outlet.

This blog has become less of an actual blog and more of an online space where my ideas go to die. I tend to sit down with what I think would be a good idea for a post, hammer away at the keyboard for a while, and then ultimately decide that whatever it is I've written is not suitable for posting, either because it's too personal or just not interesting enough to warrant putting out there. So today I say "screw that." I'm posting this. I don't care that it's an ultimately pointless piece of stream of consciousness rambling. I don't care that there's no deep message to glean, no profound nugget of wisdom to be gathered. Heck, whenever I do feel like I have something of substance to write, it's because I want to throw out some kind of impactful one liner, but then I end up having to craft an entire post around it, and I then find I don't have as much to say as I originally thought, and then that draft goes to the blog cemetery. Well, I guess it would be more like the blog cryogenic freezing chamber, because they're all saved as drafts, but they're no more likely to ever see the light of day.

Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong. Maybe instead of trying to be structured and organized, I should just go. I usually waste so much time trying to formulate a proper introduction that by the time I've come up with something that may be acceptable, I've already lost steam and don't feel like finishing the rest of the post. This particular entry here has been largely self-reflective, and I almost feel like I should apologize to anyone who's reading it for not providing enough relevant material to your life. But at the same time, this is the most I've written in forever, and I would like to try to do this more often. Maybe the best way would be to just abandon all the rigidity and just sit down every so often, bang something out, and put it out there. Save the real writing for the guys who know what they're doing. I don't even have a title for this thing yet. I should title it with the next thing that pops into my head. There. I just did. I don't know why, but the first thing that popped into my head was one time in Spring of 2007 when I was doing an assignment for my news writing class with B. Kirk, on my bed, in the relative dark of 315. I think the light above the sink might have been on at the time, but none others. By that light and the glow of my beat up old Dell laptop, I was... I dunno, underlining things or something. The funniest thing about that is that it's not all that dissimilar to what I'm doing right now... sitting on my bed with just the light of my laptop. Maybe that's the connection. Who knows.

These paragraphs keep getting longer and longer. Maybe I should wrap this up before I start going on and on about how I had that news writing class with Amy Nipper, who would also be a Coms 101 GA with me two years later. Or start talking about that time in my communication and change grad class that our under-prepared group called an audible with a creative approach to our presentation to hide the fact that we hadn't done nearly as much work or research as any of the other groups, and it paid off big time. One of my finer moments in group presentation history, if I do say so. I went home that summer and finished up watching season 5 of The Office, and re-watching The Office is what I've spent a significant portion of my free time doing lately, so here we are, full circle. Or something.

Earlier when I said "I was gonna post this," I wrote that because, at that time, I wasn't planning on posting this, and I was frustrated at how I sat down to write but then couldn't come up with anything tremendously worthwhile. But I don't care that this makes little sense as far as traditional narratives go. Maybe that's the point. Maybe I need to not care so much and just do this more often. Every so often perhaps I'll stumble on a good lesson that I can share with the people who read this. Or maybe I'll just continue to get stuff off my chest, and in so doing ease my own mind a little bit. Either way, I'll feel better at the end of it all.

Top 5 Thoughts Of... Today

It's been a few months and I know there are one or two of you out there who actually read this, and I had a few unclassifiable things running through my brain case today, so here we go. Naturally, I thought of all this while I was at work, but I had the good sense to actually jot down some notes so I would have a framework upon which to build.

So here we go:

1. "This iced coffee is delicious. We're teetering on the edge of perfection here." Like I said, I was at work, and it has been my ritual lately to swing by McDonald's and get a large hazelnut iced coffee on my way in. For some reason, no other coffee quite does the job; Dunkin Donuts' tastes good, but it doesn't give me the energy that McDonald's does. I don't know why, but there you have it, and today's was particularly delicious, with just the right blend of cream, sugar, and hazelnut syrup.

2. What I wouldn't give to be able to wander down the hall, barge into 305, and declare "Oh, HI folks!" before launching into the Billcast. Catharsis at its finest, and I could surely use it.

3. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was a fun game, and not at all destructive, despite what Danny Latin maintains about the time he just cut the power to my computer while I was in the middle of playing it.

4. I ran a mile in Wii Fit yesterday, so I effectively hopped back and forth on my feet for 14 solid minutes. My calves are on FIRE.

5. Happy New Year.

Well that was brief enough. I should probably do this more often.

Milk And Cookies

Eating cookies is never a simple matter. Oh sure, it's simple enough in practice, but when you delve a bit deeper, it becomes a matter of delicate balance. Once you start eating a cookie, you get thirsty, and while there are certainly a wide range of options when it comes to beverages, the natural thirst quenching champion in this arena is milk.

But milk is a very tricky substance, and this is where it starts to get complicated. You see, not enough milk, and you have to get up off your butt when you run out so you can finish eating your cookies with the least amount of cognitive dissonance (OH SNAP, SHAKY APPLICATION OF COMS THEORY). Too MUCH milk, on the other hand, and you encounter the opposite problem. You're left with a glass (actually I prefer plastics) of more milk than you can drink comfortably without the aid of cookies, at which point you're forced to retrieve more cookies.

But how many cookies? You have to carefully gauge the amount of milk left in your cup so as not to take too many cookies, because if you do, then you won't have enough milk, and the cycle begins anew. The real art here is in calculating exactly how much milk to put in the cup on the first try; the acquisition of extra cookies only follows after you've already biffed the milk portion.

I find this scenario mirrors the ebb and flow of life's fortunes. What we have is never good enough; we always need something more. Once we've got what we want, we have to move on to the next big thing. After too much of that, we're reminded of why we wanted what we wanted in the first place, until we've had enough of that once again. On and on, back and forth. It's a vicious cycle.

Or maybe I'm the only one who has that much trouble just drinking the leftover milk.

IT'S ALIVE!

Oh buddy boy... it's that time again. Time to start... BLOGGING!

Yes yes, I know what you're thinking. Well, it's one of two things.

1. Holy cow, I thought this blog was dead forever, but what great joy it brings me to see new life breathed into it once again!

2. Alright, so what have you got to offer me after all this time?

3. What is this noise?

Okay, so that's three things. I'm rusty, bear with me; it's been over a year since I last picked up the metaphorical pen, and in those 365+ days, I'm certain I've lost some of my touch. Heck, it's been about two and a half years since I did any REAL earnest work on this thing. I know, that's far too long, and to expect anyone to be interested in what I have to say after such an interval is a stretch at best.

But hey, Andrew Timm will read this, and that's good enough for me.

Writing is something I've always personally enjoyed... hang on, I have to get up and go pause my music. I'm not terribly good at multitasking, and any distractions at all cause my thoughts to become muddled.

Okay, that's better. Now there are a few things I have to clear up before anyone starts yelling at me. First of all, while the technical term for what I've got here is a blog, I am not a "blogger" in the conventional sense. I don't aim to follow any particular rules or structure in my posts, and if you take a look at my previous entries you'll note that this is more of a collection of rambling essays than of "blog posts." I'm still gonna refer to them as blog posts though, because that's easier and sounds less ridiculous than saying "rambling essays" all the time. If you know me, then you know that I kind of like to do my own thing, and if you don't know me then you will probably not enjoy this blog in the slightest, as it's mostly intended to entertain myself and some of my good buddies who happen to enjoy my rather opinionated prose. I'm not looking to make a living here, I just want to have a good time.

As a subset of that last point, you've probably encountered the phrase "less is more" on a few occasions in your lifetime. Well kids, that's going out the window here. Brevity, as far as I'm concerned, is not entertaining. I love words, and I like to see what I can do with different combinations of them in front of a period. This, of course, is not to say that I'm going to be long-winded just for the sake of being long-winded, but rather just to emphasize that if I think something sounds better with more words, I'm going to use more and not dummy it down just because you don't feel like taking half a second to scan your eyes over a few extra letters. If you don't like it, go read someone else's nicely contained, bullet pointed list and get the eff off. I ramble, and I enjoy it. This is my blog, not yours, and it's not meant for the "TL;DR" crowd. Those people are morons. If you are among their numbers, I am absolutely not sorry for hurting your feelings.

As you may have noticed by now, this post isn't going anywhere in particular; this is mostly just an exercise to help me get back into the swing of things and to likewise let you know that I'm getting back into said swing. But in the vein of introduction and foresight, I will say this: 2011 was one heck of a year. Good Lord Almighty there is so much I could say about that one single year and everything that happened during its span... I mean, 2009 was a pivotal, life-altering year (and I guess by comparison 2010 was kind of like a fart in the pages of history), but 2011 was... earth-shattering. Yeah, I guess that's a decent hyperbolic way to describe it. So I guess that's what I'll leave you with tonight. Sometime in the near future, I'll give you my take on 2011 and its events. I'd love to get into it now, but it's pretty late and I should probably get some sleep at some point. I don't think I could do a post like that justice in this frame of mind, but it's something I definitely need to tackle.

Oh and one last thing before I go: the date on this post is gonna be February 15th, but in actuality it's March 29th (or 30th technically I guess, since it's after midnight). I'm a stickler for tradition, and there's no way I'm gonna let an anniversary of this blog's creation go without recognition while it still lives. It's now been (over) three delightful years since I first posted on this blog, and hopefully now that I've got a cave of my own in which to lurk, I'll get around to many more posts this year than I have in the last two and a half years. Fingers crossed.